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On December 16 1955, a young Queen Elizabeth opened the first terminal
building at London Airport, the hub now known as Heathrow.

Her Majesty, who arrived dressed in an air force blue coat, declared the
opening an “important stage in the story of London Airport”, as the terminal
replaced a village of tents where passengers were previously forced to wait
for their flights.

On Tuesday a large crowd gathered close to the same spot where the Queen had
stood almost 58 years ago.

They may have been dressed in luminous yellow high viz vests rather than air
force blue but the event was of equal significance in the development of
Heathrow, which is now the world’s busiest international airport,
transporting 70m passengers a year.

Tuesday marked the 12-month countdown to the opening of a new £2.5bn terminal
building to replace the facility opened by the Queen in 1955.

A United Airlines flight from Chicago will be the first to arrive at the new
Terminal 2 (T2) building - designed by Norman Foster - on June 4 2014.

The building inaugurated by the Queen was later renamed Terminal 2, despite
being the airport’s first permanent facility. It was originally only
designed to handle 1.2m passengers a year but it was having to cope with 8m
by the time it was demolished in 2009.

The new terminal - distinguished by an impressive 50,000 square metre “wave
roof” - will be capable of handling 20m passengers a year.

It is the latest stage in a wider project that will completely change the face
of Heathrow over the next 15 years.

By around 2030, the airport will have been entirely rebuilt around two main
terminals, two and five, which was opened in 2008 following a £4.3bn
investment.

Heathrow’s old, poorly-lit buildings with low ceilings, which became
associated with bad customer service and long check-in queues, will be
banished to memory.

Heathrow hopes the new T2 building will take the stress out of modern-day air
travel by making it easier for passengers to pass through the various stages
of check-in, security and departures. As one senior Heathrow official
remarked: “You will probably be able to go from your car to a glass of
Champagne in the departure lounge in about 20 minutes.”

The T2 project has provided employment for 35,000 people during the
construction phase and, Heathrow points out, is entirely private
sector-funded.

Where possible, the airport has sourced materials from UK suppliers. The
terminal’s steel frame, for example, was made by Severfield-Watson
Structures in Bolton. The stone flooring has been supplied by Vetter in
Manchester and Prater in Surrey. Even the cable has come from the UK, from a
company called Krone in Tewksbury, Gloucestershire.

Improving efficiency at the heavily-congested Heathrow has also been a key
motivation for the overhaul. As the airport saw demand increase over the
decades, it expanded in a piecemeal way - to the extent that it took on a
messy, inefficient lay-out, where planes often find themselves trapped in
cul-de-sacs.

The vision is for the airport to resemble a “toaster rack”, with T5 (Other OTC: TFIV - news) to the
west and T2 to the east, flanked to the north and south by the two runways.
Satellite buildings will run parallel to the two main terminals along the
centre of the airport.

The more straight-forward lay-out will allow aircraft to taxi out to the
runways more easily, cutting down on delays.

In 2016, Terminal One, an outdated building next to T2, will be closed and
later demolished. T2 will be further expanded on to that site so that it is
roughly the same size as T5. Terminal 3 will then also be demolished.

Although Heathrow has fewer runways than rival hubs in Europe, such as
Frankfurt and Amsterdam Schiphol, the new lay-out will make the UK airport
more competitive, according to John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow’s development
director. Unlike other European airports, Heathrow won’t often have to bus
passengers out to aircraft, which puts off business travellers, particularly
from wealthy markets in Asia and the Middle East.

“If we want more long-haul routes from the UK, we need to attract those
business passengers,” Mr Holland-Kaye said.

Heathrow’s decision to rebuild its facilities comes at a critical time, with a
debate raging over where to build more runways in the UK. Aviation experts
have warned Heathrow will be forced to close if the Mayor of London, Boris
Johnson, gets his way and a new hub airport is built in the Thames Estuary.

Mr Holland-Kaye said Heathrow was the only hub airport “for the foreseeable
future”. He said Heathrow’s shareholders, which include several sovereign
wealth funds, are happy about the development “as long as they get a good
return”.

Construction will finish in November (Xetra: A0Z24E - news) and Heathrow is taking no risks prior to
its opening on June 4 next year. Memories of T5’s first chaotic day are
still raw, when flights had to be cancelled and the baggage system collapsed.

The opening of T2, which will eventually accommodate 26 airlines, including
Lufthansa (Xetra: 823212 - news) , Virgin’s short haul airline Little Red and United, will be
“phased”, while the airport will undertake six months of testing. “We can’t
promise that everything will be perfect on day one,” said Mr Holland-Kaye,
cautiously. “It is an incredibly difficult and complex thing to get right.”

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